Trump’s New Travel Ban Blocks Migrants From Six Nations, Sparing Iraq

WASHINGTON — President Trump signed an executive order on Monday blocking citizens of six predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States, the most significant hardening of immigration policy in generations, even with changes intended to blunt legal and political opposition.

The new order continued to impose a 90-day ban on travelers, but it removed Iraq, a redaction requested by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who feared it would hamper coordination to defeat the Islamic State, according to administration officials.

It also exempts permanent residents and current visa holders, and drops language offering preferential status to persecuted religious minorities, a provision widely interpreted as favoring other religious groups over Muslims. In addition, it reversed an indefinite ban on refugees from Syria, replacing it with a 120-day freeze that requires review and renewal.

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Responses to President Trump’s new executive order on immigration have been varied.CreditCreditElaine Thompson/Associated Press

But the heart of the sweeping executive action is still intact, reflecting Mr. Trump’s “America first” pledge to safeguard against what he has portrayed as a hidden influx of terrorists and criminals — a hard-line campaign promise that resonated deeply with white working-class voters.

The new order retains central elements of the old one, cutting the number of refugees admitted to the United States each year to 50,000 from about 110,000. Mr. Trump is also leaving open the possibility of expanding the ban to other countries, or even putting Iraq back on the banned list if the country’s leaders fail to comply with a requirement that they increase intelligence sharing, officials said.

“Unregulated, unvetted travel is not a universal privilege, especially when national security is at stake,” said John F. Kelly, the homeland security secretary, appearing alongside Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the Ronald Reagan Federal Building in Washington on Monday.

Mr. Kelly said the order was now “prospective” and applied “only to foreign nationals outside of the United States” who do not have a valid visa. None of the men took questions.

The Trump administration quickly tried to break the legal logjam, filing papers in United States District Court in Washington late on Monday seeking to lift an order blocking the fulfillment of the initial ban.

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Jeff Sessions, the attorney general; Rex W. Tillerson, the secretary of state; and John F. Kelly, the secretary of Homeland Security, discussed President Trump’s revised travel ban.CreditCreditStephen Crowley/The New York Times

But the president’s revisions did little to halt criticism from Democrats and immigrant rights advocates, who predicted a renewed fight in the courts.

The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, described the new order as a “watered-down ban” that was still “meanspirited and un-American.”

Margaret Huang, the executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in a statement that the new order would “cause extreme fear and uncertainty for thousands of families by, once again, putting anti-Muslim hatred into policy.”

The new measure will be phased in over the next two weeks to avoid the frenetic, same-day execution of the order in January, which prompted protests across the country and left tearful families stranded at airports abroad and in the United States.

Administration officials privately conceded that the initial version of the order was a political debacle that damaged Mr. Trump’s nascent presidency. But they were much more sanguine about the second order, arguing that the new, multiagency review process could be used in the future to bend Mr. Trump’s uncompromising messages toward Washington’s bureaucratic realities.

Mr. Trump signed the first ban with great fanfare, in front of reporters, at the Pentagon. “We don’t want them here,” Mr. Trump said of Islamist terrorists. “We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas. We only want to admit those into our country who will support our country, and love deeply our people.”

This time, the White House issued a photograph of the president signing the order alone at his desk in the Oval Office.

Justice Department lawyers said the revisions rendered moot legal cases against the original travel ban. But opponents said the removal of a section that had granted preferential treatment to victims of religious persecution was a cosmetic change that did nothing to alter the order’s prejudicial purpose. Immigrant rights lawyers had argued that the provision was intended to discriminate against Muslims, pointing to recent statements by Mr. Trump.

“This is a retreat, but let’s be clear — it’s just another run at a Muslim ban,” said Omar Jadwat, the director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups that sued to stop the first order. “They can’t unring the bell.”

Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York and a plaintiff in a suit seeking to block the first order, said his office was reviewing the new ban, adding, “I stand ready to litigate — again — in order to protect New York’s families, institutions and economy.”

Congressional Republicans, who were split over the first travel ban, had a more muted reaction. But Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who backed the first order, issued a statement saying the revised order “advances our shared goal of protecting the homeland.”

Citizens of Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Syria and Libya will face a 90-day suspension of visa processing as the administration analyzes how to strengthen vetting procedures, according to a homeland security summary of the order.

The removal of Iraq from the list came after talks with security officials in Baghdad and at the urging of Mr. Mattis and State Department officials, who have been in communication with Iraqi officials alarmed that the ban will turn public sentiment in their country against the United States.

“On the basis of negotiations that have taken place between the government of Iraq and the U.S. Department of State in the last month, Iraq will increase cooperation with the U.S. government on the vetting of its citizens applying for a visa to travel to the United States,” homeland security officials wrote in a fact sheet given to reporters.

The timing of the ban seemed intended to reset the White House political narrative, after a turbulent week that began with Mr. Trump’s well-received address to Congress. That success was quickly overshadowed by the controversies over Mr. Sessions’s failure to inform the Senate of his contacts with the Russian ambassador and Mr. Trump’s unsupported accusation that President Barack Obama tapped Mr. Trump’s phones during the 2016 campaign.

Critics say that Mr. Trump’s vow to impose “extreme vetting” on migrants, especially those fleeing the war in Syria, disregards already stringent screening measures, and the fact that none of the recent terrorist attacks or mass shootings on American soil were perpetrated by people from the nations listed in the ban.

Last week, The Associated Press reported that it had obtained a draft homeland security assessment concluding that citizenship was an “unlikely indicator” of a threat.

Homeland security officials, speaking to reporters by telephone on Monday, pushed back against that news report, arguing that it was culled from public sources and excluded classified information that paints a more dangerous picture.

An official speaking on the call said the Justice Department had identified 300 “refugees” who were being investigated for their links to Islamist terrorist groups or for holding pro-Islamic State positions. Some of those people already have permanent resident status, the official said.

But homeland security and Justice Department officials declined to provide further details, and would not say how many of the 300 people being investigated came from the countries covered by the revised travel ban.

Nicholas Kulish contributed reporting from New York, and Scott Shane from Washington.